The Trump administration claims a painting of refugees at the U.S.-Mexico border that once hung in a Smithsonian-affiliated museum is evidence that the institution is “out of control,” the White House’s latest criticism of the Smithsonian as it conducts a wide-ranging ideological audit of Washington’s flagship museums.
In a Thursday post on X, the administration shared an image of Refugees Crossing the Border Wall Into South Texas, a 2020 work from painter Rigoberto A. Gonzalez showing a family of four scaling the U.S.-Mexico border wall with a ladder.
“This is ‘art’ from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery commemorating the act of illegally crossing the “exclusionary” border. This was even made a finalist for one of its awards,” reads a Thursday X post from the administration. “This is what President Trump means when he says the Smithsonian is “OUT OF CONTROL.”
The work, one of the finalists in a 2022 open call for “American portraiture today,” hung in the National Portrait Gallery between 2022 and early 2023.
It is unclear if the painting is still in any Smithsonian-affiliated museums.
The Independent has contacted Gonzalez, the Smithsonian, and the National Portrait Gallery for comment.
“For several years the news media have been reporting stories on the rising numbers of families, especially children, immigrating to the U.S., and the escalating violence on the border between the U.S. and Mexico,” Gonzalez, who was born in Mexico and now teaches at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, told a campus website of his work. “This is too big a story to report through raw journalism… I believe that painting can evoke an authentic aesthetic experience that conveys meaning in people’s lives and work as a catalyst for change.”
The White House did not answer questions from The Independent about how the painting came to the administration’s attention, or whether the work was still hanging in the Smithsonian.
“Illegal immigration is bad and should not be glorified,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement. “Under the Trump Administration if you want to enter our country, you must follow our laws and go through the legal process.”
Refugees and asylum-seekers seeking to enter the U.S. are in fact protected by law and not inherently considered illegal immigrants.
The Trump administration has attempted to suspend refugee admissions into the U.S. and requests for asylum at the border, though a federal appeals court this month narrowed the asylum moves.
The Gonzalez painting was mentioned in a 2022 New York Times piece that the administration has cited in its campaign to overhaul the Smithsonian, in which then-director of the National Portrait Gallery Kim Sajet spoke of her desire to include a broader range of individuals and artists in the longstanding museum, rather than the historic focus on the “wealthy, the pale and the male.” Sajet stepped down in June.
Critics lashed out at the administration for its criticism of the painting.
“It’s a powerful portrait of a family making a hard decision to seek a better life,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, wrote on X. “Imagine how fragile you have to be to not understand why this art has value — and how afraid you are of free speech.”
The fracas over the painting is part of the administration’s larger push to reshape the Smithsonian to be in line with the administration’s view of history.
A White House official helping lead the effort this week accused the institution’s Washington museums of putting too much focus on slavery.
“The fact that our country was involved in slavery is awful. No one thinks otherwise,” Lindsey Halligan, special assistant to the president, told Fox News on Wednesday. “But what I saw when I was going through the museum was an overemphasis on slavery. I think there should be more of an overemphasis on how far we have come since slavery.”
Earlier this week, the president said his Smithsonian campaign, which was described to officials in a letter earlier this month, was part of a concerted effort to eliminate “woke” ideology, just as he had from U.S. universities, a push the administration had previously largely described as an attempt to stop campus antisemitism.
“The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of “WOKE,’” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday. “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”
“This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the president’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions,” a letter to Smithsonian officials last week, viewed by The Wall Street Journal, states.
